Privilege is a French word, après tout

I met the first one last night. Tugging at his silk scarf, he explained to a table of eight or nine people, and almost everyone else in the restaurant, that he was getting out of France, going to Belgium to avoid the new Hollandais (Hollandien?) tax régime. The most nerve-wracking bit, he said, was driving across the border with artworks and cash. Which was why he didn’t go in his showy car – much safer to use a small, anonymous vehicle, to avoid getting stopped by curious border police. It would have been so great to sneak off to the loo, then come back and tap him on the shoulder: “Excusez-moi, monsieur, I am from the income tax department, did I hear you say something about Belgium?”

He is, though, a bit late. The canny ones, mainly the owners of large, profitable companies, went years ago, because even under Monsieur Sarkozy France had a hard-hitting tax régime, and it didn’t pay to get too successful.

Meanwhile some of those who can’t leave are beginning to get hot under the collar, because the Hollande camp has announced that the chairpeople of large, state-controlled companies are going to have their salaries guillotined. From now on, the top salary cannot exceed 20 times the lowest salary. The boss of EDF, the electricity company, will probably see his pay cut by 69%. The head of the post office by 40%. Unless, of course, they delight the unions by hiking the lowest salaries. The companies would go bankrupt, but they’d sink with a smiling workforce.

So as not to be seen as purely “anti-boss”, Monsieur Hollande is also proposing to cut his own salary, mainly to distinguish himself from Sarko, one of whose first measures on getting elected (after he’d taken a holiday on a billionaire’s yacht and got himself dubbed “le Président bling-bling“) was to double presidential pay. Le Président will now have his salary reduced from 20,000 to 14,000 euros a month, almost exactly ten times France’s minium salary, le Smic (salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance – croissance being growth), which stands at 1393 euros for a 35-hour week. That’s about the rent of a one-bedroom apartment in a not very chic area of Paris.

This sounds very noble – politicians bearing the burden and all that – but the thing about French politicians’ pay is that it represents only a small proportion of what they actually get. According to a pretty reliable-looking website that I found, France’s 577 députés (MPs) receive 7100 euros a month, approximately the salary of a reasonably successful middle manager. However, on top of this they also get 6,400 a month for personal expenses (travel, clothes, taking people out to dinner, etc) and 9,100 to pay staff, as well as a free office and phone/internet costs. That’s over 22,000 euros a month, 16 times the Smic, and most of it tax-free. They can also hold other elected offices, such as mayor of their town, which can bring in a further 5,000 or so euros. What’s more, even though their expenses are audited, no one is going to get all British and start complaining about little things like how many suits an MP has bought, and whether it was really necessary to drink champagne for breakfast. And sure, some of it has to be spent on staff, but this part of their pay is given in a complicated interest-free loan system. According to one person I spoke to, who seemed relatively sane and sober, it has been known for a politician to spend this loan on an apartment, thereby getting a free mortgage for the five years of their term of office, or longer if they’re re-elected. And in recent times, Parisian property prices have been rising by about 20% a year. In short, a canny député can get very rich. Un peu plus d’austérité is perhaps needed, and real austerity rather than just chipping away at the visible part of the politicians’ salary iceberg.

Maybe this is what inspired Monsieur Hollande to say that he didn’t want to go and live in the palais de l’Elysée. He would, so the French media has been saying, prefer to stay in his three-room apartment in the frankly boring new bit of the 15th arrondissement. Even the most egalitarian people I’ve asked find this insane. Turn down a house in the centre of Paris, with a garden? And chandeliers that he wouldn’t have to dust himself? And a frankly huge parking space out front, with a policeman to stop the traffic when he’s driving in or out. All of it rent-free?

Rent-freeness is the key argument here, because the palais de l’Elysée is there to be lived in, and they’re not going to divide it up for underprivileged families, so Mr H might as well use the space and save the state the cost of renting his place in the 15th, which probably costs at least 2,500 euros a month (double the minimum salary), plus an annual tip for the concièrge and no doubt a cleaning lady at least three or four hours a week. And – more seriously – the huge cost of security. That neighbour popping round to borrow a cup of foie gras needs to be frisked before leaving the lift. Strangely, it’s much cheaper for the nation if the president lives in the presidential palace rather than a middle-class flat. Some austerity is just a false economy.